Green Scene: Carbon offsetting, Building green, and Reusable Chopsticks

Last week Shanghaiist attended NextStep’s Green Business Forum to find out more about Shanghai’s local, green businesses. The focus of the conference included the carbon credit market and how to greenify your office or building.

Many of you have probably heard of URBN, the first carbon neutral hotel in China, and eaten at their lovely (unfortunately, non-carbon neutral) restaurant- Room Twenty Eight. However, you may not know the company that helped them achieve their claim to fame, Zero Emissions. This relatively new organization aids individuals and small to medium-sized enterprises to calculate and offset their carbon footprints. For large corporations, Climate Bridge is one of the few wholesale carbon traders with offices in Shanghai.

The most pragmatic presentation of the event was given by the first foreign NGO registered by the Chinese government, Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots. Their Eco-Office program will deploy a team of trained students to evaluate your office environment and employees’ energy consumption. The idea behind the audit is to help companies save resources, decrease daily energy consumption, and reduce operating costs. Best of all…the program is free! Over 70 companies have already benefited from Eco-Office. If you want to add your work space to the list, contact the program manager, Sophia, at sophiarootsandshoots@gmail.com.

Building or adding on to your home or office? Then you’ll be happy to know there are green firms like A00 Architecture and Arc8x Design to help you out. If you’ve been to A Future Perfect or Just Grapes, then you’ve already seen the stuff they can do. A00 is also working on a slick new database called GIGA- Green Ideas, Green Actions, created to link designers with green building material suppliers. For more details on GIGA, click here.

Finally, one of the greatest conference freebies Shanghaiist has ever received are the BYOC or Bring Your Own Chopsticks (pictured). With 25 million trees cut down each year to produce an estimated 45 billion chopsticks in China, we thought it was a perfect time to switch to these reusable, foldable, and easily transportable chopsticks by LiveGreen Eco. For just RMB 15 or $2, you, too, can do your part to save the world...starting with just a pair of chopsticks.